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Katherine Villari and Sam Beasley || Editors-in-Chief Back cover by Sam Beasley info@lalluredesmots.com
Special thanks to... Mr. Jacob Smith.
Contents 8 Valkyrie by Benjamin W. Wild
60 Poetry Cycle: River City Rhapsody by Christopher Flakus
11 Neighbors by Robert Vaughan
64 Scout Camp photography by Wolf189
12 Song of the Dryad photography by Murcko
72 Slower Than Eroding Lands by James Sheridan
20 Porcelain by Alley Smith
73 Small Thoughts by James Sheridan
21 The Pool by Jesi Bender
74 Vinny: Brooklyn 2008 by Jesi Bender
22 Artist Feature: Julianne Popa
76 C8H10N4O2 photography by Sam Beasley
36 A Man Tries to Pee by Ashton Politanoff 38 Volare photography by Catherine Asanov
88 Bouquet of the Body by Jessica Tyner 89 The Carving Station by Jessica Tyner
56 The Dancing Girl by James Weldon Johnson by L’Allure des Mots
90 Good Clean Fun by A.J. Huffman
58 The Power to Heal by Lisa Pellegrini
91 Sleep Remedies by A.J. Huffman
59 Loneliness by Lisa Pellegrini
92 My Greatest Lies Are Still the Truths Nobody Believed by Benjamin W. Wild
Letter Letter Issue Issue8 9
In We Junehope of 2011, you we are launched all beginning lalluredesmots.com, to defrost as winter bringing becomes together spring. writers and artists who share our sensibilities in an internet portal to life’s sensory experiences. And now, just a year and a half later, with theThe helpspringtime of our blessed is a time contributors, for rebirth, thisfor whim the renewal of ours has of life’s become energies. a bit ofThis tangible is an especially matter, something meaning-one canfulthumb seasonthrough as just leisurely a couple without months the ago,need we idly of awondered glowing rectangle if (read:tohoped) aid in viewing. the Mayans had some insight to our fate. Having escaped the apocalypse, we choose now to make the most of the precious Our minutes minds allotted are blown us.by this. In In thisthis issue, issue, wewe explore wonder ourabout memories. thoseOf around youth,us, ofconsider mistakes,what of honest it means lovemaking. to be clean, We watch recall feelings our bodies of change helplessness (for better as we watch or worse), the world and self-medicate continue on. -And to calm, seek to to right get high, the wrongs to continue doneto upon exist. us. Also, we choose to ignore the approaching winter entirely and bask in our never-ending sunlight. Will you be our Valentine? With great exhilaration, we present this bound collection of souls on paper. Thank you for reading. Katherine Villari and Sam Beasley Editors-in-Chief Katherine Villari and Sam Beasley Editors-in-Chief
Robert Vaughan leads writing roundtables at Redbird- Alley Smith is a Canadian writer who is working Redoak Writing. His prose and poetry can be found in towards building a career out of writing fiction and numerous journals. His short fiction, “10,000 Dollar poetry. Her first published novel can be found here: Pyramid” was a finalist in the Micro-Fiction Awards http://sbpra.com/aasmith/ 2012. He is senior flash fiction editor at JMWW, and Lost in Thought magazines. He was the head judge for Wisconsin People & Ideas 2012 Fiction contest. He hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect. His book, Flash Fiction Fridays, is at Amazon. Christopher Flakus is a poet and short story writer His poetry chapbook, Microtones, is forthcoming from from Austin, Texas. He has lived most of his life in Cervena Barva Press. His blog: drugged out squalor and things have been tough on http://rgv7735.wordpress.com. and off for as long as he can remember. But he has been happy with the eccentrics he is lucky enough to call friends and family. He tries to focus on the humor in many of the situations he’s found himself in, and hopefully that translates in his work. His poems are all based on his own experiences and although changes Ashton Politanoff lives in Los Angeles. His writing have been made for the sake of poetry, they are as true has appeared in Circa, The Inertia, and Marco Polo as it gets. Arts Mag, and is forthcoming in Tiger Train.
Benjamin W. Wild: Farmer of Language, Poet, Binge Thinker, Forklift Driver, Professional Wanderer, Moustache Tamer, Grenadier. Contracted Writers Disease at an early age, which was remedied for a short time with television and banality abuse. Fell into remission after a brief encounter with a thing called Love, and has been hacking up language ever since. Has been committed to the Island Colony of Australia in the hope that the heat and lack of culture will cure him. Prognosis: Doomed.
Lisa Pellegrini is a graduate of Beaver College (now Arcadia University) in Glenside, PA, with a Bachelor’s degree in English. Her poetry has appeared in Zouch Magazine, Downer Magazine, and The Rainbow Rose. Her artwork has also appeared in Zouch Magazine.
An artist and poet from Hamilton, NY, Jesi Bender honed her poetic experience in Manhattan as a contributor to numerous publications, founding member of the Hope Street Artist Collective, and an editor for L.E.S. Review and the Metropolitan Archivist. Her work can be seen in The Houston Literary Review, Pyrokinection, WordNerd, 13th Moon, and the NYPL’s Reader’s Den for Poetry Month. Bender holds a B.A. in English and Fine Art from Cornell University and a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute.
Murcko is a full time commercial and fine art photographer based outside New York City. Murcko has shown work at several galleries in New York City, Toronto, Detroit and the University of Rhode Island. Recent work was selected and published in American Photography 28 – a collection of the best photography from 2011. His work has also been featured in PDN magazine.
Wolf189 loves mathematics, physics, poetry, beautiful women, good people, photography and cinema. …among many other things. wolf189.tumblr.com Jessica Tyner is originally from Oregon, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and has been a writer and editor for ten years. Currently, she is a copy writer for Word Jones, a travel writer with Mucha Costa Rica, a writer for TripFab, a copy editor at the Londonbased Flaneur Arts Journal, and a contributing editor at New York’s Thalo Magazine. She has recently published short fiction in India’s Out of Print Magazine, and poetry in Slow Trains Literary Journal, Straylight Magazine, Solo Press, and Glint Literary Journal.
Traveling carpenter and poet, James Leo Sheridan resides in Florida and is writing his memoir.
Catherine Asanov is a photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. You can see her work at http://www.catherineasanov.com
A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has previously published six collections of poetry all available on Amazon.com. She has also published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. Most recently, she has accepted the position as editor for four online poetry journals for Kind of a Hurricane Press ( www. kindofahurricanepress.com ). Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/amy.huffman.5 and http://twitter.com/poetess222.
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Fiction:
Valkyrie by Benjamin W. Wild
She had two mouths. That annoyed me at first; you never knew where to look when she was talking because you didn’t want to stare or be rude—to make a glitch in etiquette—like puzzling over someone with cock eyes, or one of glass and lazy. At least she used the same lipstick on both sets of lips. She could sing two different notes simultaneously too, because she had two vocal columns, like a bird. So she was popular for what many thought a talented birth defect. She had good teeth as well. Two mouthfuls of good teeth and dual vocal range on one set of lungs will take you places. She mostly stayed home. Of all her features, I liked her posture the most. You’d never know she’d broken her wings in the fall. She had that regal carriage of a ballroom dancer, or a nurse with a tray of syringes. She sometimes spoke out one mouth while putting food into the other—that was always a joy to watch—putting whole cherries in one mouth and spitting the pips out the other. Yawning was practically a party trick. I loved watching her smoke though! She made an art form out of smoking two cigarettes at the same time, blowing smoke rings, fluttering and pouting. If she’d had four arms I might have even married her. She had a youthful body when I met her, the kind you wanted to wrap around yourself in bed all day. She got plenty of looks when she first came down, but the two mouths freaked most guys out. I like the exotic ones though, and there was something vulnerable in her that attracted me, like she’d trust me to protect her, making me feel more manly. I quickly lusted for her, and watched every performance she gave in the dingy bar I frequented and that she’d gotten a gig at with a few skid-row jazz musicians. I showered her with plastic flowers and gum ball trinkets. Bought her mackerel and scallops. Rolled her cigarettes. Applauded longest. Whistled the loudest. The greatest man made structure is a pretty woman’s ego. I built her a pyramid of sand to go with it. I miss her eyes already... You could go skin diving in them. They were like the souls of giant squid, and her lashes were like little tentacles that pulled you in to her inky wells. I swear her hair floated, like she was always underwater, but I’m probably just imagining things now. You know how you remember things differently about someone after a time? Say a few years, or a half bottle neat of Cuban rum. She talked a lot of course. Even when we were kissing or making love, she’d be talking. Sometimes to herself. In whispers. In two languages. I wasn’t good at listening. I only have one set of ears. Even if I had two sets of ears it wouldn’t have mattered. There was no content on either channel. I just can’t stand gossip—and she was a gossip. Gossipy women already talk too much, but it was like she never drew breath, or could talk under the water her hair floated in. She would have been a great swimmer, but she said her kind weren’t that fond of water. When we first went out we actually talked because we were new to each other, but familiarity slowly bred discontent.
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
L’Allure des Mots
I just got tired is all. It’s pretty hard to get around it. People change—like places—and maintenance is such a chore. The joy slowly faded from us. The love that had engulfed us like a king tide now receded, leaving seaweed and lumps of whale bile on the tables between us. I started drinking more, she put on weight. We fell out of love and into a bland routine of convenience. A routine with three mouths. When I was drunk she was beautiful again, but she’d scream like a banshee at me. Both of her. When I was sober she looked like a blue raven with hair rollers, and always two cigarettes on the go that went into building little ziggurats of ash and crushed butts in the bakelite ashtrays. Then I lost my job at the mill. They said I wasn’t performing well enough; “...under the agreement of my contract and the terms laid out from the last review...” I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care again. Then she fell pregnant. I think it was to me. I told her to get rid of it. Maybe she thought it would rekindle something in us. In me. In her anyway. Women want children; men just want the world. We want to conquer it. Women just want to conquer men. I just wanted to drink. I wanted my old life back. The one where I only had one mouth to feed. She insisted on having the child. I should’ve cut her loose sooner. I’d allowed a cage to grow around me, and a song bird to nest on me, and slowly nag me to the grave. I looked for another job. Tried cleaning up and doing “the right thing” by her. Never have enough money. Never be ready for children. Selfish little fucks. “You can’t win. You can’t break even. You can’t leave the game.”* I grew a beard to mourn the death of my freedom, and landed work in some factory across town. The menial, monotonous kind of shit; stacking, lifting, moving, sorting, stock taking, scanning, cataloguing, filling orders, sweeping, loading trucks, unloading trucks. Dying like a bug that swims in circles in a toilet bowl, vainly trying to escape its spiritually castrated struggle, until someone pours bleach on it and flushes it out of existence. Never matters what the “product” is, the catharsis is the same. The mill wasn’t so great, but at least it was good manual labour, not this knuckle dragging, cog-head tedium that should be reserved for cellulite ridden celebrities and impeached politicians. All my co-workers were TV eating zombies with nice cars and tuberculosis-looking skin. They’d spend decades giving their health and time to some industrial line up so they could afford to have prostate cancer, life insurance, and a diabetic retirement punctuated by a heart attack, or aneurism—a week out from Christmas no doubt. They made their nests out of chewed newspapers and gyprock, squabbled over trivia, and littered small tribes of idiots. They ruled the world. They fed the furnace with their lives. They were the seasoned filling in the barbecue chicken gene pool. I felt a strong mixture of superiority and defeat around them. She started making baby clothes. We painted the nursery sky blue. I found a cot and cleaned it up. I lost *Ginsberg’s Theorem.
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money at dog fights and won money at boxing matches. Broke even for a while, then just lost. Winter came around and she ballooned. She dragged me along to a birthing class. I fell asleep. At least I was sober. She was pissed off for days. I thought about having a warm bath with razor blade braclets. Her water broke on the bus to the supermarket. The driver took us to the hospital, everyone was pissed at us, but the driver told them all to go fuck themselves. She littered six children. The first five had two mouths each, the runt had one mouth. Great—they can feed and cry at the same time. It was like bankruptcy, a jail sentence, rape, AIDS, cancer and death, all delivered in a 24 hour window. In fact that’s what I named these Valkyrie spawn in my head: Bankruptcy, Jail, Rape, AIDS, Cancer and Death. She named them: Huey, Duey, Luey, Mickey, Donald and Goofy; or something like that, I wasn’t listening. I went to a bar. Bars. I drank. I drank for four days, in which time she and her clutch had been discharged. I hadn’t been to work in a week, and somehow I went to the factory and dramatically got the sack, plus my pay for the previous week to be gotten rid of. I stumbled home at dawn with a half bottle of Cuban rum in my hand. I crept into the apartment, and I ate the first two children. I smothered two more, as I couldn’t eat them all, and that’s when she woke up and set upon me. She damn near scratched the flesh from my body and perforated my ear drums, but I managed to kill another one of the litter by dashing its brains against the wall. Through my one good eye I could see the runt of the litter, which she snatched up and drove to her breast. I remembered the gun. I kept a loaded pistol in the bedside. She made for the front door, which I’d chained and bolted, and I made for the drawer with the 10mm Silver Saviour. My aim was a little inebriated and I mostly shot holes in the plaster-board and door frames as she scrambled around the apartment, but one bullet finally flew straight, and struck her between the shoulder blades. She arched back, her elbows tucked, twisting as she fell against the wall to face me, and slid down it to the floor, leaving a red flight pattern against the sky-blue wall of the nursery we had returned to. Baby Death lay silently in her arms, a chubby pink hand reaching out for her exposed, bulbous nipple. Both her mouths fell open—and inky eyes wide, she rasped from one mouthful of good teeth, and gargled from the other—then fell totally silent, and beautifully still. Baby Death suckled, quietly. The gun dropped from my hand to the floor. Blood coursed down my stinging face, neck and chest. My shirt was shredded to tatters. My ears were ringing from the screaming and the gunshots. I picked up the half bottle of neat Cuban rum, and headed slowly into the bathroom, where I carefully shaved off my beard. It was time for that warm bath now.
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Fiction:
Neighbors by Robert Vaughan
Dirk He walks his Dobermans, Chechnya and Falluja. Sees his neighbor on her stoop. “Whassup?” he asks, the dogs tangling around his legs. “Not much. Good thing Wigs and Pinkle aren’t outside with me. They’d have been devoured by these monsters.” Chechnya chews on the leash, his huge teeth exposed. “Nah, these guys are sweet. They would never do something like that.” They laugh. He likes her smile, imagines seeing those guinea pigs ripped into shreds. He untangles the leash. “C’mon, boys.” He imagines what she looks like covered in whipped cream. Even her heels. They keep laughing as he walks away. Ariel When the news came, she slid into the woods, found the zip-line they’d made. She listened for Chechnya. Falluja. No barks. No bites. Gone… Poof! She knew he’d been up to no good. She held her breath as she zipped back and forth. Hanging. Back and forth. Even the birds went quiet. The stillness lurked like danger. Did he make a sound while he was dying? Zip. One last gasp? Zip. Will I, she wonders. That winter afternoon seemed to last beyond a hundred years.
Song of the Dryad
photography Murcko (www.murckophotography.com) model Nerlande makeup Dana Marie of DMH Beauty Creations styling Custom-designed vine dress by Green Willow, Rye, NY
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Poetry:
Porcelain by Alley Smith
Her hands extend, growing tendrils of cracking porcelain And my eyes follow the blue and grey vines Inside, hidden rivers Rushing wild and She wilts, sinks in the silt To her knobby knees Her mask slipping, weak She speaks in me, parted pink lips Swollen, sweltering hot And she cries In her dreams I wake, she shakes Begs me, asking why How I could fade and filter away Everything that made us whole Her throbbing soul Clenches tight and I’m reminded That love is just a word And beauty is absurd Her dark river flows, accusations fluid Because she knows, and I know No more promises And her porcelain breaks
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The Pool by Jesi Bender
Skimming along the surface, keeping on eye on both worlds Lugubrious and faint-shifting earth Always melting, melting into myself. The breeze above my blue feet clawing underneath the bubblegum-body of a drugged world Softly sad, it aches through in something so close to an actual calm. I think this must be like heaven (a gray frame), the breeze above, undulating in a suffocating cloud-womb I tranquilly asphyxiate like I had a belt round my throat and a limp dick in my head(hand) float, float, float—I melt away and I ache no more. When the Autumn air catches wet skin, I smell the leaves and I feel their fall.
Artist profile:
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Julianne Popa
Julianne Popa is a child of the universe. You can see more of her work at her blog (http://mmelancolie.tumblr.com/) and flickr (http://www.flickr.com/ photos/juliannemelancolie/) LAdM: Do you try to create images, or simply freeze time with your photography? Popa: Even if sometimes I do try to create a certain image, what I mostly do is to just freeze moments. Sometimes I try to re-create a certain image that I have in my head and bring it into a photo but it just makes me feel better and happier and I always tend to prefer the result of the spontaneusly captured photographs than of the created ones.
Who are the people in your photographs? The main person character in my photographs is me but I also take a lot of photos of my boyfriend, Charly. You can see him in almost all the photos that I have posted on the internet. Besides me and him, I take photos of friends, family and the animals that live with us. I also like to photograph strangers without them being aware of my camera. When I do this I sometimes feel like the narrator who is taking this person’s life to images, I am capturing and telling a story about them without their even knowing it. What compels you to take photographs? It is something that I feel that I have/need to do.
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Do you feel people rely too heavily on digital technology? Yes, definitely. And I don’t like it. To me digital stuff is like eating junk food or readymade foods and analogue is like cooking your own, healthy and living food. Digital detaches us from life. Do you do other kinds of artwork? No. What is your favorite poem? The first ones that came to my mind when reading the question were: Alone by E.A. Poe and Poemo by Jesús Lizano. What other artists inspire you? To name a few, I find the writings of Nabokov, Neruda, Baudelaire, Montaigne and A. Camus delicious. Some photographers whose work I really like are CartierBresson, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Linelle Deunk, Mona Kuhn, David Hamilton, Lina Scheynius, etc. I love and admire the works of many artists but what inspires me is life itself with its places, people, noises, music (Dvořak, Bessie Smith, old cuban music, experimental folk, silent-noise, rock n roll), etc.
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“...I sometimes feel like the narrator... capturing and telling a story.”
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“[Taking photographs] is something I feel that I have to do.”
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Fiction:
A Man Tries to Pee by Ashton Politanoff
The man tried to pee. That’s all he was trying to do. Let’s call him Gilbert. He had to pee badly, but nothing was coming out. Maybe it was the cold, because Gilbert wasn’t that old. He was trying to pee standing, in a public restroom on the Venice boardwalk, right near the basketball courts. The ones that are individual little closets of rot in low squat buildings made of granite blocks. He had his own personal room, protected by a metal door. Clumps of wet sand soaked with either piss or ocean or both fermented at his feet. He held his breath for as long as he could, and then started breathing through his mouth, digesting instead of inhaling. It was dark inside, but his eyes adjusted. Aim wasn’t the issue here. Outside, basketballs dribbled, rubber soles screeched, and hoop rims rumbled. He started peeing. His piss struck the metal bowl with a hum. It was almost a silent piss. The metal door behind him jolted. He stopped mid-stream. Someone was on the other side, tearing at the handle. The door banged hard and loose against the lock, metal against metal. “I’m peeing in here,” he said. The door stopped. Gilbert took a deep breath and let the stream go again. He listened for its low music. The door erupted. He stumbled forward, knees knocking against the toilet bowl, the denim of his jeans dabbing up piss remnants. Someone had kicked the door. He wasn’t sure where his stream was falling now. He held himself up by leaning against the granite wall opposite with his free hand, while he finished peeing. As he braced for the next swift kick of door, he also prayed he wasn’t pissing on his own clothes. When he finished, he didn’t unbolt the door right away. He imagined the door flying at his face and permanently flattening his nose. He couldn’t steady his hand. But nothing came. He unlocked the door, and pushed it gradually open, a signal of surrender to the other side. His eyes met the bright light wideopen, ready for quickness. The first thing Gilbert saw was a group of young boys with shaved heads washing their hands quietly. They were looking at him. Then Gilbert saw him. He was strong, black, in basketball high-tops wearing a blue backpack. “Just trying to roll a blunt,” he announced. Gilbert held the door open for the man just trying to roll a blunt. Gilbert didn’t want any problems. He walked away. “HEY,” the voice said, booming. He turned around. The man with the backpack stood outside the door, hunched, his wide brow agitated. “WASH YOUR HANDS.” Gilbert didn’t move. “COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW AND WASH YOUR HANDS.” “Okay,” Gilbert said. “Okay”. He still didn’t want any problems. Gilbert stepped over to the outdoor sink and noticed the clear soap dispenser filled with a pink slime.
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This was some kind of miracle, soap in a public restroom, albeit a partially outdoor one. Gilbert had never seen this before at the beach. The young boys were still there washing hands. They moved slowly and deliberately like frightened animals. They could scatter any second. The man with the backpack faced them all. “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH SHIT YOU TOUCH HERE.” He grabbed the handle and opened and closed the door. He opened and closed the door again. “I didn’t know they had soap,” Gilbert said, trying to reason. “WASH YOUR HANDS.” The man with the backpack disappeared behind the closed door and was silent. Gilbert looked at the boys. He whispered to them, “Do you know him?” They shook their heads and left. Gilbert washed his hands. After, he decided to wait for the man. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t have any sort of plan or anything to say. But he felt something growing inside, something red and warm. He kept watch from a short distance, by a small hill of sand. Bicyclists and joggers and runaway dogs and skaters passed by. He kept his eyes locked on the particular stall, watching the occasional person try the handle, relishing the fact that they were now disturbing the man just trying to roll a blunt. He hoped some of the weed fell into the darkness, sinking into the piss-wet sand. He hoped some of the piss was his own. When the door did open, the man with the backpack moved in slow motion. His face sagged a little and his eyes were tunneled on the basketball game up ahead, where he eventually roamed. In his hand, the man held the longest blunt Gilbert had ever seen, wrapped in a brown skin. The man could have been holding onto a dead snake and Gilbert wouldn’t have known the difference. Gilbert had to give it to the man. He was good at rolling blunts. Gilbert found himself walking over, peeking through the bleachers as the man questioned a couple of possible vagrants if they had next game. Then the man strolled over to the sidelines as one team pressed towards the hoop, the ball bulleting from one player to another. The speed picked up. So did Gilbert. Gilbert stepped up to the man with the backpack. He didn’t know how to play. Didn’t care. He was just trying to pee earlier. That’s all. “You hopping in or what,” Gilbert said to the man, his words edging towards something else. The man regarded Gilbert. He sized him up, head to toe, like he didn’t recognize Gilbert, didn’t remember that he was pile driving against Gilbert’s door when Gilbert was just trying to pee. The basketball launched past their heads, out of bounds into the other court. Gilbert didn’t notice. He had jeans on, and the wrong kind of shoes. He stepped across the white line, onto the court. If he had a ball in his hands, this is when he would have thrown it at the man. “Well let’s do it then,” Gilbert said. He repeated himself. “LET’S PLAY.”
Volare
photography Catherine Asanov art direction & hair Whitney Willison hair assistant Keena Rice styling Katelynn Tilley and Rafael Linares makeup and hair Melissa Sandoval photo assistant James Biscardi model Magda Kensch
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
all parachute dresses Bohemian Society
Video:
The Dancing Girl by James Weldon Johnson An audiovisual interpretation by the editors of L’Allure des Mots
1 min. 39 secs. Press play button to view video
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Fiction:
The Power to Heal by Lisa Pellegrini
Bloody claws of yesteryear destroy liquid weapons that threaten my soul. They remove the invisible scars from my face. The talons turn to flesh, then eyes, then beating hearts, then a single heart that promises to comfort, to cherish, to love.
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Loneliness by Lisa Pellegrini
Naked branches shiver under an institutional sky, compulsively clean and pasty white, loveless, shriveling their hearts with sickening formality. Medusa arms have no voice to speak of abandonment. Frost coats their tips, freezing their tears solid.
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Poetry:
Poetry Cycle: River City Rhapsody by Christopher Flakus
Drag City Steaming And the bricks are behaving oddly today The buildings on Congress Avenue are re-imagined Their foundation trembles in the rain Bicycles sing past dive bars and Bad directions are drunkenly spoken By thunderous alcoholics with good hearts and bad breath A dozen students cross the street like frightened deer A girl from Tulsa can’t find her purse At last call Some of us are on our way to the madhouse Some of us are on the road to success On the east-side Jailbirds slap their hands against concrete and Tumble dominoes and five dollar bills Moving as steady as conveyor belts Circulating bets and cracking jokes Drinking whiskey and swinging Like bullwhips against the night sky
There are creatures in the swamps With great yellow fangs and gnashing jaws I stay away from the swamps now And the mosquitos and the snakes I steer clear from all of that now Still I drink with my friends And drive in great circles across parking lots Built upon clay cities and ash And we do not stop to think of those who lived here Long before we Roared our engines and sat Hungry and waiting For new friends below street-lamps And the evening came upon us
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And the dark was tingling palpably in our skin For the shadow was everywhere and now Our coins had all been spent And there was no gasoline Nothing to do But wait And the bottom has fallen out and the dark tingles Engines roar And nothing to do And we will never be set free
We do not cut without Preparation Before removing tumors and Malignancy The prayers are done The smoke is burned Flesh is cleansed
Being sick and needing the money You never went to see her Gone For nearly a week Everybody said “He was never here” And your lies grew stronger Bred children And generations of lies were compiled upon the Corpses of past lies either forgotten or finally left alone And you missed her Should have seen her What a beautiful, irradiated smile…
~ Death by misadventure Old school elements The rusted tracks That we crossed as teenagers Where secrets were shared And beer was guzzled in the Ditches Past the bridge A trickle of water that we called a creek We were all tall, handsome men We blazed night after night Mad comets, good boys And the smell of ether Rekindles the memories of those summers spent Digging holes And our souls became the souls of insects As we served food And worshipped the white folds of flesh That barely tipped us and stuffed their fat faces With mediocre food We spit in the cream soup And dropped sandwiches on the bathroom floor served them the filthiest shit when They screamed that the food was cold Get you some boy! Work and work I ain’t got no car But there is a thick layer of glue Covering the hole on the car radiator and we still had Our self-respect Those times Scoring coke in slums and shadows I walked with the devil and reached for the red paper in his hand I signed the contract Worked the night shifts And a chorus of busted guitars ushered me into an arena of madness Where I became a guardian of sacrament desperation
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Skinhead on the corner and he’s the only one holding As far as I know So I get off the 1M on Congress In front of a shitty Mexican restaurant El Gallito I ate there once With my parents I walk past it and into an apartment building behind the dumpsters His name was Dead Cat and his place was Filled with guns and needles Fucking everywhere On the couch And clips and Glock 9’s Scorched spoons And shot guns Some dude with tattoos Passed out on the couch Belt still around his arm I score and try to jet Skinhead dude feels offended That I didn’t stay and fix there I have no rig man, I told him Use one of mine, he said Fuck no man you’ve got to be crazy What the fuck man, think I’m some diseased fuck? No man, it’s just. I never do that. Fuck that. I fix at home. Whatever man. I thought we were buddies. We are buddies…man, you can fix with me anytime, just bring your own works I got the fuck out of there and caught another bus Off work at 6:30 And it was almost eight I got high as the cotton in June Fixed in a Texaco bathroom Had a rig all along The skinhead dude Just kind of gave me The creeps
Scout Camp
photography Wolf189 (wolf189.tumblr.com) styling and original designs Ermalinda Manos models Christine Unruh, Alexandria Finley, Chelsey De Leon
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
72
Poetry:
Slower Than Eroding Lands by James Sheridan
slower than eroding lands with a speed that only silence could testify to comprehend my pulse quivering in a troubled hand trembling from a shaking it cannot understand I have continuously lived for this while doubt filled feelings formed the strength for each step as though they were my first sitting rotting in the rising sun of your voluptuous razor bladed blinding eyes for all the recklessness you sought passionately in me you seek now to eliminate to create the model of what you wish to make me and I would be your mold had you let me change on my own accord
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
L’Allure des Mots 73
Small Thoughts by James Sheridan
Trapped within these walls The deception and disillusion Creates craters no drywall compound could ever cover or elevate Though its surface might as well be destroyed It is all I have to cover these barren beaten walls
74
Poetry:
Vinny: Brooklyn 2008 by Jesi Bender
It’s the fall that reminds me: All life’s dynamics are controlled by distance The lines are all that matter My voice sings streaks like sunlight, they sever Disconnected letters muddling the air We are controlled by the limits of an ugly science, its soft criteria Where a body is series of lines And mine is corrugated Like a cardboard box Like waves in the sea Like a heartbeat on a screen It was in the brown-grey colors of buildings and trees and the wet in your shoes And hiding in dark bars with music and the smell of patchouli and beer That just feels heavier for some reason; It’s that and it’s that feeling which returns Only with the dying exhalation of the year You could never live a life without idols In a room wallpapered with drawings and old photographs In a world painted like those old photographs, the soft rotting Yellows, oranges and reds over the monochrome Where once he sat on dresser drawers, Crying - I CAN FEEL THE WORLD The weight was palpable and in the dark Her comfort felt like pejoratives. It reminds you of genius, how ugly it can seem, and it reminds you Of beauty, seeing that the process of age is not to die but To fade back into blanched fetuses searching for a womb again And we’re made to think of art as being something superfluous What is life but a series of moments and where you choose to place yourself? Time and lines, time and lines
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
L’Allure des Mots 75
Who was it that promised you salvation? Was it the lights in the sky? Oh you who in darkness Mourn the wet-hot sweetness Of the morn in this body, In this uncomfortable thing
O2 N4 H 10 C8 photography Sam Beasley makeup Merenda Morris for MAC Cosmetics hair Faizah Jones model Skye
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
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88
Poetry:
Bouquet of the Body by Jessica Tyner
What they don’t tell you about starvation is that you hunger for nothing. The pounds drop, an exhausted mother letting go of a wailing newborn. Inches slough away, callouses and tired skin pumiced off with a burning stone. I never once felt empty. Instead, my stomach grew tauter, crescent arrangements wilting beneath eyes bruised and battered as wedding day gardenias buried in creams and powders – and my hip bones blossomed, a quiet display of Asiatic lilies, sickeningly sweet and nearly weeping before the decay sets in.
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
L’Allure des Mots 89
The Carving Station by Jessica Tyner
Miguel fed me sips of whiskey as he stitched a nadie te pareces desde que yo te amo across my rib cage in between moles and scars and halting English, discarded fragments of the cancer. In the undergrad days, my professor said always, always have beautiful words – other than your own – running through your head. You don’t want to wake up locked in solitary confinement alone. Every day comes in the end. The malignancy is the shackles, you were the padded walls and a Chilean poet was my grasping hope escaped from my slipping mind, a pedestal beneath carved breasts.
90
Poetry:
Good Clean Fun by A.J. Huffman
it’s unbelievably simple beauty is inside okay you’re thinking safety cages crumple zones not even skin is a whole different animal you dance inside my chest i am part traction control willpower boys willpower no soap can do all that
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
L’Allure des Mots 91
Sleep Remedies by A.J. Huffman
Relief may be just. Specific stinging: this flowering shrub is an inhibit production. Substances took a (less?) anxious effect. Sleep aid: valerian. Levels of acid induce relaxation. Tamer does this (your breath) also.
92
Poetry:
My Greatest Lies Are Still the Truths Nobody Believed by Benjamin W. Wild
* My greatest lies are still the truths nobody believed. Most of my regrets are in the shape of a woman, and sound like clarinets. One is a violin; the faster she plays, the windier it gets. I haven’t made a wish since the last one came true, And I don’t pray for anything but the end. The last time I cried, or even remember crying, was in my sleep. I keep my cards close, like all bad gamblers do. My greatest success has been remaining lonely. There’s a lot of work in it, but when I die I should cope rather well. I haven’t been dancing since the twist, But I sing in the shower as penance.
L’Allure des Mots || Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9
L’Allure des Mots 93
I could have been anything, but I chose this instead. There’s fewer expectations on my part, and it’s debt free. I so desperately wanted to master forgiveness when I was young, But after a while I found no one did me wrong. This is why I’m so fortunate, because I’ve learnt to avoid humanity and its tricks. I’m a sucker for its trappings though. It’s the human inside the animal that chooses the cage over the wild. Did I tell you I’m in love? Must have slipped my mind too. I keep seeing the future. It’s not bright. It’s kind of irrelevant—like the skin of a pomegranate; It just holds a thousand bloody pearls, and the promise of forever.
Spring, 2013 || Issue No. 9 www.lalluredesmots.com
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